Gen Z gets its election news from social first now

According to new research from Sprout Social, 55% of Americans say a social media post has informed or changed their opinion on who to vote for, with 28% saying a post informed them and 27% saying one changed their mind outright. For Gen Z, the number climbs to 79%, and nearly half of the generation's voters — 48% — say a post flipped their opinion entirely. The company's quarterly Pulse survey also finds that social media has overtaken television as the most trusted source of election news among Gen Z and Millennial voters, even though TV still tops the ranking for the general population.

As reported by the GlobeNewswire release, the findings land just weeks before the November midterms, when the fight for voter attention will move decisively into feeds. For younger voters, election news is no longer something you sit down to watch — it is something that finds you while you scroll, sandwiched between memes, mutuals, and sponsored posts.

How the election news gap splits by generation

The generational divide is stark. The social media firm's broader research shows social platforms are the primary election news source for Gen Z (33%) and Millennials (38%), while television news still dominates for Boomers (54%). That gap is expected to widen: over one in five Gen Z and Millennial users say they plan to use social media even more to follow election news ahead of the midterms, turning an already lopsided split into a near-total generational handoff.

Creators sit at the center of that shift. Gen Z is nearly twice as likely as the general population to rely on creators and influencers they follow for election information, according to the survey. Political figures have noticed the dynamic — candidates such as Zohran Mamdani and activist Deja Foxx have built large political followings by posting directly to audiences instead of going through traditional media. Abigail Hart, the company's public relations manager, notes that social media has replaced television as the leading election news channel for younger audiences, who lean heavily on the creators they already follow.

Why candidates are posting like creators

The survey also shows how direct posting reshapes how candidates are perceived. Half of Americans follow at least one politician on social media — a share that rises to 70% among Gen Z — and a third of respondents say politicians seem more approachable when they post about their policies, rising to 42% of Millennials. In a cycle where Gen Z candidates are already running for Congress in 2026, the feed has become a campaign stop in its own right, and a policy explainer filmed on a phone can travel further than a cable-news segment.

That has real stakes for the midterms. The candidates who understand the format — unscripted, responsive, fluent in the language of the feed — have an edge with the youngest bloc of voters. The ones who treat social media as an afterthought risk invisibility where an entire generation now gets its election news. Campaign budgets are already following the audience: the question is no longer whether to post, but whether the posts land. For first-time voters especially, the difference between a candidate who explains a policy in plain language on camera and one who hides behind a press release can decide which name gets remembered on the ballot.

The deepfake fears shadowing election news feeds

There is a catch, and it is a big one. The same survey finds 80% of Americans worry about encountering AI-generated deepfakes of candidates during voting season, with 40% saying they are extremely concerned. The damage spreads beyond a single clip: 35% say discovering that one political ad was AI-generated makes them skeptical of all political ads, and 29% say they would trust the politician behind it less.

For more on the stakes this cycle, see our politics coverage. The takeaway for campaigns is uncomfortable: the channel younger voters trust most for election news is also the channel they fear will deceive them. Winning in the feed will mean proving posts are real — not just posting more of them — because a generation that gets its politics from the scroll is watching closely for fakes. Trust is the currency of the feed, and in a midterm decided by thin margins, a single convincing deepfake could be the thing that tips a race.

What happens next is a test of whether campaigns can earn that trust at feed speed. Candidates who pair the reach of social platforms with proof — named sources, cited numbers, and a willingness to correct mistakes in public — have the best shot at holding younger voters' attention through November. For Gen Z, election news that arrives with receipts is the kind worth acting on.